Thursday, April 30, 2015

(This is something I’d started working on in 2013 and then
abandoned, for whatever reason. It’s still incomplete and disjointed but in discussing the
relative merits of Iron Man 3 today I remembered this piece. I’m posting it now
because I think some of the points raised are valid enough to maybe spark
conversation. This is parenthood, ladies and gentlemen: posting think pieces on movies that are two
years old.)

One of the major
complaints I’ve read about Star Trek
Into Darkness has to do with the way in which Kirk sacrifices himself,
dies, and is then revived with a compound created from Khan's genetically
enhanced/magical blood. That complaint, along with a subsequent viewing of Iron Man 3, got me thinking about
serialized fiction and the lies that we willingly tell ourselves in order to
experience that fiction. So with that in mind, let’s talk a little about the
eerie similarities between Iron Man 3
and Star Trek Into Darkness –
specifically the ways in which both films use what is essentially the same
trope/shortcut/narrative trick yet managed to generate wildly different
audience reactions.

…Because the thing of it is, the ending of Iron
Man 3 does EXACTLY what the ending of Into
Darkness does: it "kills" a main character (though not the
main character) only to revive her minutes later courtesy of "magic"
juice, with the film telegraphing the fact that it’s going to do this in
advance. There’s absolutely no other reason to kidnap Potts and give her the
Extremis formula other than to place her character in seeming jeopardy while
also giving the film a way out of the jeopardy it’s created (twice over,
actually – see below).

The similarities
don’t stop there. At the end of Into
Darkness Starfleet arguably has the means to eradicate death (under
certain, limited circumstances), but the film doesn’t address the massive
ramifications of that fact at all. This ticked some folks off, but what’s again
interesting is this: At the end of Iron
Man 3 technology exists which will also enable near-immortality/invulnerability,
but the film doesn't address this development in the slightest. Many of the
same people irritated by Into Darkness’
conclusion seem not to have even noticed this, let alone found it
contrived/unsatisfying/a pus-stuffed boil on the face of cinema. Nor did they
seem to be bothered by the fact that capable, lovable Pepper Potts is
transformed into a potentially unstable super soldier/veritable killing machine
using experimental and dangerous bio-technology and is then “fixed” by Stark. …somehow.
We don’t actually know how, because we’re not shown or even told how she’s
fixed. We’re just told, via voiceover, that she was. End of story. Yay?

Where was the outcry
over this maneuver from the folks who thought Star Trek’s use of the same thing was, like, totally heinous?[1] Where are the demands that Marvel
should have held off on reviving Potts until the next movie, so that at least
the death has some shred of actual impact before being reversed? There wasn’t
one, as far as I can tell. And to my addled brain, that says something
interesting about the lies that we tell ourselves when we watch serial fiction
and the ways in which our own past fandom can defeat present experience.

When you or I sit down
to enjoy any serialized fiction we implicitly agree to certain unspoken rules.
Chief among them is this: We agree to pretend that the characters are in real,
mortal danger. We agree to this despite knowing logically that at no point in
time are those characters in true mortal peril – they can’t be. So long as the Star Trek and Iron Man franchises remain profitable, neither Kirk nor Spock nor
Tony nor Pepper is ever likely to die in the final, no-backsies sense of the
word. You know it and I know it. We may not want to admit it, but it's largely true. There have been some exceptions to
this rule over the years[2], but
they are exceptions that prove the rule. In popular serialized fiction the lie
that we consistently, constantly tell ourselves is that these characters will
ultimately fail and die. They don’t. And even when they do, their deaths are
inevitably triumphs and their resurrections almost always preordained.

Sure, some of these
films may feint toward irrevocable death, or prolong the uncertainty longer
than expected (as when the makers of the original Trek films waited until Star Trek 3: the Search for Spock, to
resurrect everyone’s favorite Vulcan) and sometimes the lie is
reverse-engineered (as when Abrams and Co. revived Kirk as a younger, alternate-universe
version of himself, effectively bringing the character back from the dead). But
unless and until someone fictional comes along who far outstrips the
profitability and likability of an existing serialized fictional character,
that character will essentially be immortal – and every instance of danger that
such a character has ever experienced and will ever experience is a lie that we
are knowingly and willingly complicit in.

We do this all the
time as consumers of serialized fiction, and we’ve been doing it for an awfully
long time. Heck, even Arthur Conan Doyle had Sherlock Holmes plunge from the
top of the ReichenbachFalls, only to have him
cheat death and live to sleuth another day. Superman “died” fighting Doomsday,
and was then turned into four different lesser versions of himself before
resurrecting shortly thereafter via I don’t even pretend to know what.

Immortality is the
default state for characters in popular serial fiction and at some point every
fan comes to realize this on some level or another. We can talk about how this
is a problem, but that doesn't change the popularity of the characters or the
demand to see more of them. Complaining about serial fiction’s issues will not
make serial fiction go away. So it seems to me that we have two choices, once
we've realized that fact: (1) we can get annoyed with this to the point where
the form of serialized fiction itself becomes unbearable (a fine choice if
that’s your bag – it’s why some folks are so regularly irritated by the “Big
Shocking Deaths” promoted by major comic book companies), or (2) we can accept
the contrivance the way we accept, say, the similarly convenient lie that the
hero in a given action movie isn't going to save the day/get the
girl/whathaveyou in favor of what matters more when it comes to storytelling
(see below). Tony Stark spends most of Iron
Man 3 seriously outnumbered and dangerously outgunned, but all of that
melts away by the film’s climax, which sees Tony leaping and cavorting about in
mid-air from flying suit of armor to flying suit of armor in open defiance of
any sort of mortal danger or previously crippling psychic trauma because it’s
time for him to win the day, basically.

I’m not telling you
anything you don’t already know, either consciously or sub-. It’s an obvious
fact, but the obviousness of that fact doesn’t make it any less compelling to
think about. Have you ever really thought about this, and about what it means?

I’d like to suggest
that, in part, it means when someone complains about Kirk’s “death” being meaningless
they likely aren’t actually complaining about that at all. That complaint is
more likely symptomatic of a deeper dissatisfaction with a film, expressed by
selecting an example that, were it part of another film that the viewer liked
more on the whole, would apparently not bother them one lil’ iota.

Part of what’s
interesting about both Shane Black’s Iron
Man3 and Abrams’ Into Darkness is that both filmmakers
seem quite aware of the narrative “magic” they’re deploying. And while Shane Black
might be more overt in nodding to that awareness, Abrams’ own awareness is
there as well, coded into the ways in which the movie plays with pre-existing
expectations. It’s as if, knowing that they’re riffing on events from Wrath of Khan, and knowing that a
portion of the audience knows they’re playing those riffs, Abrams and Co. want
the audience to momentarily believe that their Star Trek 3 will focus around the quest to revive Kirk. For a few
enjoyable minutes as I watched the film my mind wandered into exactly that
space. But instead of ending Into
Darkness with an open question, Abrams and Co. shake their figurative heads
and playfully say “Nahhhh. We were only fooling you.” The same goes for Black’s
approach which, if anything, is even more dismissive of any potential emotional
impact. And here’s the thing: I’m pretty sure that they both made the right
decision.

Do we really want the next Star Trek
flick to spend its time on searching for a way to bring Kirk back to life, or
for Iron Man 4 to be subtitled
"The Search For Potts"? Not I. I don't need Stark to travel the world
on behalf of Pepper Potts, and I don't need Abrams and co. to spend half of a
movie inventing a way to bring Kirk back to life. I'd much rather they just got
on with doing cool stuff in with superheroes/in space. That's reductive,
obviously, but true.

What matters when these sorts of characters are "killed," or so I’d
argue, is that the character is in some way changed in an interesting way for
having flown this mortal coil and/or that other characters are changed in
interesting ways as a result - that there's meaning to the death other than the
actual death itself, which is why (I think) so many "deaths" come
across as lazy or hackneyed. Not because the character revives, but because
their "death" didn't mean anything else to the larger story being
told. Take, for instance, Kirk and Pepper.

Kirk dies in a moment of self-sacrifice, and by dying and then being revived
both he and his crew learn something. Kirk learns the value of humility, and
the truth of that whole "the needs of the many" rigamarole. The crew
learns the lengths to which their captain will go for them. Kirk's death arguably
serves a narrative function larger than momentary shock. What do Pepper and the
Iron Man 3 audience learn? What
purpose does her momentary death serve in terms of the larger story being told?
I’d argue that the answer is “nothing, actually.” Neither Pepper nor Tony nor
the rest of the cast are changed by that death, and our understanding of those
characters as an audience isn't really changed either. You could argue that
Tony comes to truly appreciate her as a result of seeing her die, but I’d argue
that he’s come to appreciate her before that moment – when he goes to rescue
her. You could argue that we learn just how kick-ass Pepper is, and while I’d
agree that she is indeed kick-ass, I’d also argue that we knew that already.
We’ve seen her deal with Tony, with Obadiah, with Killian, and we’ve seen that
she’s a capable, strong woman. Does making her a Power Ranger for a few
minutes, and then immediately stripping her of those abilities, add to our
knowledge of who she is? Does it enhance or deepen the story in any real way?

It’s possible (though unlikely - maybe I'll find out tomorrow when I finally get to watch Age of Ultron) that
the answer to those questions is “yes.” After all, we have no idea how Stark
“fixed” her. For all we know, he merely regulated Extremis so that she’s not in
danger of exploding, but still retains her new T-1000 superpowers. That’s a big
change to the status quo if so, and would indicate that Pepper can now join in
on all the derring-do if Iron Man 4
ever rolls around. But the implication, as it stands, is that Stark “fixed” her
by removing Extremis/rendering it inert/otherwise de-powering Pepper.
Off-screen. Without explanation.

Hmm.

...All of which is said to
spark, perhaps, some thought and dialogue on serialized fiction and the lies
that we tell ourselves. I want to know what you think about this, and why. Have you seen both films? Did
either or both of the “deaths” I’ve talked about here bother you? If so, why?
If not, why? How do you deal with the inevitable near-immortality of serialized fictional heroes? I’m genuinely curious to hear your answers, and so leave the floor
to you.

[1] Don’t
even get me started on the “Abrams included a gratuitous shot of a woman in a
bra and is therefore regressive” thing that circulated for awhile. Did you
notice that Iron Man 3’s entire plot depends on Maya Hansen feeling so jilted
over a one-night stand that she becomes complicit in both a terrorist campaign
and knowing experimentation on human subjects to often deadly and disastrous
effect? Or that Pepper Potts spends the last portion of the film in a bra because, like, her shirt got burned off, man?

[2]A few years ago it
could have been labeled “The Bucky Exception,” after the one comic book
character who was considered un-revivable for decades and decades, except that
he’s not dead anymore either. So.

Wednesday, April 8, 2015

Later this year I'll be publishing a book on Twin Peaks. Entitled "Speaking Backward," the book examines the themes and mythology of the show, episode by episode. It is, I hope, an entertaining read for fans of the show as well as a handy guide for those who are just discovering the world of Twin Peaks for the first time.

Today, in honor of the show's 25th anniversary, I'm posting a sneak preview of the draft introduction to Speaking Backward. I hope it's enjoyed, and I hope that you'll consider plunking down a few nickels for a copy when it's finally unveiled. I encourage you to leave comments, constructive criticism, and recipes for pie in the comments below.

Welcome to Twin Peaks:
An Introduction

When Twin Peaks
first appeared on the ABC television network back in the Ancient Year Of 1990
it became an instantaneous cultural phenomenon. If you were alive, sentient,
and within range of a water cooler/school locker the question “Who killed Laura
Palmer” was, for a brief moment in time, largely inescapable. Co-creator David
Lynch graced the cover of Time magazine; Actor Kyle MacLachlan hosted Saturday
Night Live for the first and last time in his career; T-shirts bearing Laura
Palmer’s face, the phrase “Who killed Laura Palmer?” and/or the visage of lead
character Special Agent Dale Cooper sold like hotcakes; There were several
spin-off books, including The
Autobiography of Agent Dale Cooper: My Life and Tapes, and The Secret Diary of Laura Palmer.

None of this was business as usual.

Twin Peaks entered a prime time network television landscape that
had carefully and rigorously defined audience expectation over decades, and swiftly
proceeded to gleefully subvert and destroy those expectations. Long-standing
television conventions were twisted and changed, made unfamiliar and strange.
No one at that time had ever seen anything quite like it and no one’s seen
anything like it since, although it’s served to inspire a host of subsequent
creative types in all areas of the arts from television to film to music and
on and on anon. Oddball/cult/genre shows sprouted in its wake with programs
like The X-Files, Northern Exposure, Picket Fences, Carnivale,
and Lost (to name just a very few)
all owing obvious debts to Co-creators David Lynch’s and Mark Frost’s
weirdo-epic about a small town struggling against and/or succumbing to the
primal, animalistic call of capital-E Evil.

The first season of Twin
Peaks – just nine gorgeously strange hours in all – is unassailable “Great Television.” Some of that Greatness is historic in terms of the show’s
place in time and culture, and in the ways in which the show has continued to
reverberate with cult audiences around the world decades after its cancellation.
Some of that Greatness is artistic, in terms of what co-creators David Lynch
and Mark Frost were able to achieve on a major American television network, and
in the ways it has subsequently influenced other artists and creators.

The
second season of Twin Peaks is…well….problematic.
It begins well, builds to a genuinely shocking revelation, and then just sort
of slowly lies down in the middle of the figurative road and stays there for
awhile muttering to itself before rousing once more over the course of a couple
hours for what remains perhaps the most unconventional, bewildering,
artistically inspired and just-plain-gonzo finale ever to grace a television
screen.

Twin
Peaks as a whole wields
a potent combination of wry irony and bone-deep sincerity that’s rarely
attempted and even more rarely successful. Its strange mixture of eccentricity
and normalcy, of artificial-seeming behavior and raw, real emotion, of parody
and melodrama, of quirky character piece and horror show, defines Twin Peaks
from the start and marks it out as a singular creation. This is a place where florid
clichés and uncomfortably organic passions, sincerity and irony, kindness and
violence abide so closely together that it becomes difficult to identify where
one ends and the other begins. Which is, I think, very much a point (though notthe
point).

For this particular viewer much of Twin Peaks’ cumulative
power lies in its unblinking fascination with Evil. In its best moments the
show offers a startlingly-clear view through grimy, warping glass at what feels
and sounds and seems to be pretty much Evil Incarnate. It doesn’t have this
effect on everyone (it’s far too idiosyncratic for that), but for some of you Twin Peaks is
going to burrow under your skin and slither there. It’s going to creep you out, man. Lynch doesn't screw with
everyone's head the way that he screws so very, very effortlessly with mine.
Some folks find his films to be empty exercises in surrealism and juxtaposed
banality that don't land their punches. If you're among that crowd then you're
probably going to hate this book.

Much as I recognize and will write about the potential
for, and existence of, overinflated, underwhelming melodrama and of style without
substance in Twin Peaks, overall
(with frankly frightening regularity) Lynch's vision works the psyche over
thoroughly. His way of portraying the emergence of Evil into a mundane world
has the power to genuinely disturb. Lynch
conjures the shivers that precede the urge to flee like few others. That he can
manage this feat, not through elaborate special effects or through copious
gore, but through the careful deployment of sound, extreme lighting and
ordinary objects, is nothing short of astonishing. Lynch and his Peakscompatriots touch, somehow, on the best/worst
sort of fear there is: the uneasy prickle, the chill at the back of your neck
you get walking a hallway in your home late at night; that sense that someone
or something is THERE with you, present in some awful, inexplicable, invisible
sense.

Why is it that Lynch’s films in general (and Twin Peaks in particular) are capable
of doing this to us? Setting aside the technical aspects involved – the ways in
which sound, light and performance are deployed – what is it about the subject
matter involved here that manages to so thoroughly disarm and distress? David
Foster Wallace, writing on Lynch and his films for Premiere Magazine,
articulated an answer to this question that cuts straight to the heart of the
matter:

“Lynch’s movies are not about monsters (i.e.
people whose intrinsic natures are evil) but about hauntings,about evil as environment, possibility,
force. This helps explain Lynch’s constant deployment of noirish lighting
and eerie sound-carpets and grotesque figurants: in his movies’ world, a kind
of ambient spiritual antimatter hangs just overhead. It also explains why
Lynch’s villains seem not merely wicked or sick but ecstatic, transported: they
are, literally, possessed….they have yielded themselves up to a Darkness way
bigger than any one person….Lynch’s idea that evil is a force has unsettling
implications. People can be good or bad, but forces simply are. And forces are
– at least potentially – everywhere. Evil for Lynch thus moves and shifts,
pervades; Darkness is in everything, all the time – not ‘lurking below’ or
‘lying in wait’ or ‘hovering on the horizon’: evil is here, right now.”[1]

Wallace submits in his (terrific) essay that all of
Lynch’s films focus on Evil, and that this focus comes without the comforting
narrative fiction of clear “moral victory.” As in Lynch’s films overall, so
also in Twin
Peaks. When people do terrible things on this show
there are sometimes consequences but there are sometimes no consequences at
all. Lynch and Frost don’t introduce Evil into Twin Peaks so that “Good” can vanquish it. They introduce
Evil as fact, as uncaring force of nature; a storm to (maybe) survive but not
to vanquish – not really, not ever.

Don’t get me wrong, Twin Peaks has
plenty of quirky comedy and purple melodrama. It’s
loaded with wry, oddball touches that you might find similar to dry-as-sand
comedies like Waiting For Guffman.
It is by no means a non-stop horror show, but the horrors it offers are
profoundly disquieting and may linger with you long after you’ve turned off the television.

Part of what makes Lynch’s overall body of work so
compelling/frustrating lies in the way in which it resists concrete
interpretation. As an artist, Lynch consciously chooses not to explain himself[2],
inviting the audience to explain for itself, which brings me, finally, to the
subject of the book you’re currently holding in your grubby little hands.

This book and all of its contents represent one man’s
interpretation of, and analysis of, Twin Peaks. It is not nor does it purport to be a
definitive text. However, for all of Twin Peaks’ inarguable, wonderful strangeness the show
is doggedly dedicated to exploring certain themes that appear near and dear to
its dark, deranged heart. There are a number of genuinely interesting ideas
being batted about throughout the running time of this show, and they are ideas
that are worth discussing and exploring and chewing over with the sort of
relish that Benjamin Horne reserves for Brie and Butter sandwiches. This book
exists in order to provoke fodder for said-discussions/explorations/displays of
rampant, figurative mastication. Within these pages you will find ruminations
on David Lynch’s obsession with twins and the subconscious, on seeking truth
and on the unknowable mysteries, on ideas of “Goodness” and “Evil,” on
voyeurism and secrets, on faith and purpose and the possible futility of Love
in a world that seems designed to crush the decency within and seed corruption
in its stead.

Twin
Peaks also contains one
of the most intriguing and completely-singular “mythologies” that I’ve ever
encountered. If you’re unfamiliar with that term as it’s used here allow me a
brief moment of explanation. The “mythology” of a fictional narrative may refer
to the hidden architecture of its mysteries which a
fiction parcels out to its viewers over time. Frost, Lynch and their writing
cohorts concocted an overarching mythology for Twin Peaks that is deeply, deeply weird and somehow deeply
compelling. That mythology is more interpretable and more cohesive than the show’s
willful obscurity might suggest. In these pages you will find plausible
explanations for some of the show’s more esoteric ideas, suggestions on how the
disparate mythological elements of Twin
Peaks “add up” to a cohesive whole, and explorations into the real-world
myths, legends and ideas which may have inspired the show’s ambitious/crazy
hodge-podge of backwoods mysticism, science fiction, Eastern philosophy, and
legend.

Each chapter of Speaking Backward focuses on one episode in the series and attempts to dissect the
themes and mythology present in each hour of the show. In addition to the main
body of each chapter, you’ll also find sections devoted to “Pieces of Peaks”
(commentary or observation on episode happenings that don’t really directly
relate to the themes or mythology, but which are worth noting and/or
celebrating and/or relentlessly mocking), as well as “Trivial Trivia” (bits and
bobs of interesting/enlightening/stupefying information about the actors, the
production, and the impact of Twin Peaks).
I highly recommend that you watch each episode of the show prior to reading the
corresponding chapter in this book. Without the context that the show itself
provides, much of the writing that follows will likely read in a manner similar
to the half-crazed scrawls of a monkey on acid[3]. This
might sound appealing to you, but the monkey in question will assure you that it is
not[4]. Care has been taken to make this book friendly to those of you who have
not watched Twin
Peaks before. You can safely read along as you watch, one episode to one chapter at a time, without fearing
any real “spoilers” regarding future events. Those of you who have seen the
show before will hopefully find that this same care has been taken to
nonetheless illuminate aspects of the show’s themes and mythology.

…You’ll also discover a fair amount of irreverence in
these pages. While it is my intent to honor the creative effort and artistic
skill that went into the crafting of Twin Peaks, it is undeniable that the show as a whole
has some serious rough patches. There are elements/sections of Twin Peaks
that simply do not work. At all[5]. Rather
than ignore this I’ve embraced it. While this book is primarily concerned with
teasing out the thematic and mythological strands of the narrative, it’s also
concerned with enjoying and honestly critiquing a show that
is seriously weird, and seriously all-over-the-place.

If this is your first time among the wind-tossed
Douglas Firs: welcome. If you’re returning to this town for another trip on Lynch’s
Scary-Go-‘Round: welcome to you as well. We’re going to have a lot of fun
exploring this weird world together.

Now, how should you watch Twin Peaks? Whether
you’re entering these woods for the first time or making a return trip allow me
to offer some unsolicited advice: Turn all the lights off (leaving one on is
acceptable – it is also appropriately “Lynchian”). Make sure your television’s
volume is up. If you have a fancy speaker system use it. David Lynch deploys
sound like few Directors, and to my experience that sound – sometimes haunting,
sometimes sensual, sometimes baffling – is a large part of what makes much of Twin
Peaks so timelessly arresting.

To say that Twin Peaks is a
weird show is to make something of a massive, laughable understatement.
Characters often voice stilted, bizarre thoughts, or behave crazily and melodramatically,
in ways that are both soap opera-esque and a grotesque reflection of that genre.
Things happen without rational explanation. There is a Log Lady.

Don’t fight the weird; roll with it if you’re able. I
think you’ll find that it becomes kind of intoxicating in ways that are both
lovely and disturbing. You’re entering David Lynch’s head here, with only
co-creator Mark Frost and a shaken-looking Standards and Practices lawyer as
your tour guides. While that’s some cause for alarm it’s also cause for
celebration. Twin Peaks is one strange town,
but its woods are lovely, dark and deep.

Give yourself permission to lose yourself in them.

[1]Excerpted solely for critical purposes from “David
Lynch Keeps His Head” by David Foster Wallace, available in the essay
collection “A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again.” You should purchase it
immediately. The entire article on Lynch is fascinating.

[2]As Martha Nochimson notes in The Passion
of David Lynch: Wild At Heart In Hollywood, “…Lynch explained that, when he
is directing, ninety percent of the time he doesn’t know, intellectually, what
he is doing.”

[3]It may read that way regardless.

[4]Right after he mutters “Judy.”

[5]If the name “Evelyn Marsh” doesn’t already strike fear and loathing into your
heart, rest assured that it soon will.

Welcome, Foolish Mortals..

Welcome to MMorse Writes! - a resurrected home for the various-and-sundry scribblings of MMorse, author of the upcoming book "Speaking Backward: Exploring the Themes and Mythology of Twin Peaks."

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